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Until recently, we’ve had only two options when it came to virtual reality. One of them was the big, tethered headset good for everything from shooters and racing titles to a real-time casino games and other content aimed especially at adults, and the other was the lightweight, portable headset powered by a smartphone with all its limitations and shortcomings, but a much better price. Now Oculus, the company that re-kindled the VR revolution, has come up with something in between called the Oculus Go. While it is not perfect by any means, and it still has a lot of ground to cover before it could bring

At Computex 2018, Killer Networking is debuting Wireless xTend to improve the home networking experience. Here’s what you need to know. What is Killer Networking, and what do they offer? For the uninitiated, Killer Networking is a subsidiary of Rivet Networks, focused on manufacturing gaming-centric networking hardware included in high-end motherboards, gaming PCs and gaming laptops. The main feature that attracts people to Killer hardware is in its network prioritization features. Killer hardware will prioritize gaming and other low-latency traffic over, say, large file downloads or streaming video, which don’t need nearly as much prioritization as real-time gaming does. How does Wireless xTend change things?

Is Oculus AR just around the corner? The tech community thinks so. Thanks to a small change to its Terms of Service on April 19th, many tech journalists are convinced that Oculus has an Augmented Reality-related surprise just around the corner. There are multiple stacks of compelling evidence. The one that raised alarm was the added mention of AR to Oculus’ updated documents, but since Oculus is owned by Facebook, it doesn’t stop there. Initiatives like Facebook AR Studio show a clear interest in AR from the folks over at Facebook, and the close-knit nature of AR and VR technology makes Oculus a perfect fit.

In this Stories You Might’ve Missed segment, we’ll be covering the final week of March, from the 25th to 31st. Quite a few interesting stories broke in this time, so buckle up while we run you through them. (Also, Skyrim VR launched for PC yesterday if you’re interested in checking it out.) Unreal Engine shows off a stunning Star Wars real-time ray-tracing demo If the video above looks visually-pleasing, get this: it’s rendered in real-time. Visuals like this used to take hours, if not days, to render. So how is this possible? Through a technology called real-time ray-tracing. Nvidia is pushing real-time ray-tracing for its

Indeed.com boasts itself as the world’s #1 job site, and many people would agree with you. Because of Indeed’s size and scale, you can make a lot of interesting points by analyzing job posting and hiring trends through Indeed. A blog post from Indeed themselves has highlighted a number of gaming-centric trends on its site, but especially AR and VR. According to Indeed’s blog post, virtual reality and augmented reality jobs have shot up by 93% since 2015. This is a staggering increase over just three years, and with the release of Ready Player One and constantly-improving VR hardware, this number is sure to increase.

Featured Image Credit: UploadVR Everyone is trying to take input in VR to the next level. When the HTC Vive was introduced, its primary advantage over the Oculus Rift was its included motion controllers, providing a then-unprecedented VR gaming experience. While Oculus would later ship Oculus Touch controllers in response, they were still late to the punch in VR motion controls. Judging by the look of these patents, though, it looks like Oculus doesn’t want to be late to the punch again. Oculus has patented new designs for haptic gloves to be used in VR, which will enable a realistic sensation of touch for its

A common staple of PC gaming is the ability to change resolution and other graphical settings in accordance with your own machine’s performance levels. Despite how common this is in PC gaming, it’s actually surprisingly scarce in VR gaming (PC and console alike) due to the way that most VR titles are made to target a specific hardware configuration. A new feature for SteamVR hopes to alleviate this by adding a resolution-scaling feature to SteamVR. Screenshot credit: TechRadar.com The implementation of this feature opens up possibilities in two different directions. In one direction are people on the lower-end of the VR spec (GPU especially), who

Image Credit: Korea Bizwire In Seoul, South Korea, a new VR theme park is opening. It’s called VR Square. We’ve covered a great number of stories concerning VR parks, but what sets VR Square apart is that this one is smack-dab in Seoul- its Hongdae neighborhood, in particular. The South Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism and the Korea Creative Content Agency are responsible for making this project happen, likely in hopes of drawing people from all over the world to their VR facilities. VR Square has a lot to offer, from basic VR headset setups to full room-scale experiences like the one seen

Story and Image Source: RoadToVR At Nvidia’s GTC 2018 conference, researchers from Nvidia, Adobe, and Stony Brook University showed off a new system for redirected walking. This redirected walking uses quirks of human vision to get a user to think they’re walking in a larger VR space than the room they’re in would allow. The way this system works is by exploiting saccadic suppression. Saccades refer to rapid eye movements, and saccadic suppression refers to the period of blindness we experience when this happens, which can be counted in milliseconds. With high-end eye-tracking technology, this saccadic suppression can be detected and used to rotate the

Today in stories you might’ve missed, we’ll be covering stories that broke from March 1st to March 8th that we didn’t cover in their own articles. Big names like HTC and Intel made headlines this week, and even a Kickstarter project called CLOVR got a day in the limelight as well. To find out why, keep reading! HTC CEO believes that 5G can turn any compatible smartphone into a VR powerhouse Cher Wang, founder and CEO of HTC, believes that 5G networks can turn any entry-level VR device into something comparable to an HTC Vive. Considering HTC’s authority in VR- especially with their aforementioned Vive

In the second week of March, from the 9th to the 16th, more stories broke. Microsoft, AMD and Bose were all in the news for vastly different reasons, but all of these reasons were relevant to the world of VR. Or, in Bose’s case, AR. This segment, Stories You Might’ve Missed, is for news stories that broke but weren’t given articles on our site. Let’s see what we missed. Microsoft shows off prototype CLAW VR controller One of the most interesting stories to break in March was the debut of the CLAW VR controller from Microsoft. In their blog post and YouTube video (embedded above),

Is the world of virtual reality missing a Discord equivalent? The boys over at Pluto seem to think so. Discord is popular as a gaming-centric communication application, thanks to features like Rich Presence and in-game overlays. It’s also a free alternative to services like Mumble, while still being more feature-rich than Skype. Discord has quickly become the most prominent communication app for gamers, so how does Pluto hope to do this for VR? Put simply, by providing an in-game overlay. A big downside of virtual reality as it is now is that there aren’t many options for social networking unless you’re in an app strictly

There are fast news days, and sometimes there are fast news weeks. Earlier this month, VR stories were coming out so quickly that we couldn’t keep track of all them! Now that we’ve caught up, we’re going to catch you up, too: here are three big VR stories you might’ve missed from earlier this month. Zeiss provides a $150 HTC Vive alternative While VR headsets have a lot to offer, the price barrier to most good VR experiences is undeniable. For PC VR, you pretty much need to shell out for a Vive or Rift…and even at their best, those headsets cost $300+. Zeiss’s entry-level VR

From now to March 3rd, 2018, the PlayStation VR headset will be on sale for $100 off. This includes both the headset alone (which costs $300), as well as various bundles including certain VR games. Here’s a quick rundown on the best bundles available, as well as what to expect after the sale is over. Why is this happening? Short answer: nobody knows. Longer answer: it’s possible that Sony is gearing up for a new PSVR headset launch, or potentially their new motion controllers. While PS Move controllers provide an…acceptable VR experience, their inadequacy when compared to solutions made for VR, like the Oculus Touch controllers, has

Since earlier this month, VR developers have started receiving HTC Vive Pros so they can start optimizing around the new headset. After the HTC Vive Pro’s announcement at CES, news on the headset has been trickling out steadily. Most of this news is developer-centric: prior to this story, we learned that some developers are using the new Vive Pro hardware to enable hand-tracking applications. We've been eagerly awaiting this moment to share with you all. Announcing the arrival of the newest member of our VR HMD family… It's a Vive Pro! 🌟 pic.twitter.com/5lkK5sqh0G — Owlchemy Labs (@OwlchemyLabs) February 16, 2018 Owlchemy Labs, developers of Job Simulator

Humble entered the scene of PC gaming with Humble Bundles in 2010. These were pay-what-you-want bundles of indie games, with the choice to split your payment between the developers and charities. While Humble has since grown into a more traditional Humble Store, it still has a reputation as a great place to get cheap games…and their newest VR sale is nuts. Remember our Top 10 VR Games article? Well, it turns out games from that article ended up in this sale. These games are: Fallout 4 VR – 31% off for $41.99 SUPERHOT VR – 33% off for $16.74 GORN – 25% off for $14.99 Sairento

Boston-based startup Neurable will bring its brain-controlled VR video game Awakening, which the company claims is the first of its kind, to VR arcades around the world by the end of this year. This brain-computer interface (BCI) is made possible by the attachment of an HTC Vive VR headset to a brain-scanning headband equipped with electrodes that pick up neural activity by recording electroencephalography (EEG) signals. When the gamer focuses his gaze on an object in the game, Neurable’s machine learning software recognizes the resulting changes in the EEG signal and turns this into a game command, selecting that object for use. For this to

Although VR headset technologies continue to improve, with a number of new technologies slated for release this year, and with a long-rumoured Apple AR device potentially in the works, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that there are several more senses beyond sight and sound. And, because virtual taste technology appears to be nowhere near commercialization, and the only commercialized virtual smell technology remains in pre-order phase, sniffing virtual roses or eating a virtual slice of cheesecake are likely a long way off. Those looking for a bit more sensory engagement in virtual and augmented reality can take heart, however, because a number

As reported by VRFocus, Sony has released two new patents that may indicate next-generation motion controllers. The first of these patents show off a controller with an analog stick (as opposed to a touchpad common on other VR controllers or the buttons on the PS Move wands), and a number of face-mounted buttons. The second offers finger placement tracking and refers to the controller being tracked by a head-mounted display, which could imply a new revision of the PlayStation VR headset for use with these controllers. For those who aren’t familiar with the current PSVR setup, here’s a little background information. None of the hardware

Gaming studio Bethesda this week released a patch for Doom VFR which adds official support for Windows Mixed Reality headsets. While it has been reported that many gamers were already successfully using MR headsets to play Doom VFR, official support should help solve any challenges in getting the game running and any glitches within its environment. The patch also added several new features, including smooth locomotion control and movement speed options, a weapon pitch option to adjust weapon angles, various features related to controllers, a fix to a discoloring issue seen on some platforms, and various other bug fixes. Deployment of the patch occurred on